Elizabeth Alexander

Cockney Type Poster / Booklet

Calarts
December 2010
Concept, Design, expressive tpye

Process

As a collaboration between myself and 14 other designers, we created an odd methodology to make something that could turn into anything. We began this journey by choosing one noun (for me, blanket). Take the definition of that word, find the noun 3 down, then Google search the two words + lyrics, and use the first result. Then translate the text into a style found in William Strunk's The Elements of Style.

I then designed a folding poster that expresses typographically the way in which the cockney text was read aloud by a fellow designer, Gabby Datau. The type expresses time, rhythm, texture, voice inflection, volume, tonal ranges, etc. By making it a folding poster, it allowed me to experiment with the narrative, and the overall patterns of her voice. The front quadrant is simple, and focuses on the words she emphasized the most, and how she emphasized them. The inside has an overall representation of the text, and the poster itself is the whole text, with symbols I used to describe different lengths of pauses. (>> = 2 second pause, // = 2 second pause plus gasp, Ò,,Ó = 5 second pause, followed by louder phrase)

In the second poster, I decided I would take a more conceptual approach. I drew a connection back to my original word (blanket), and text (a song about a self conscious boy). The outside was a quilt-like design, that used typography to help create patterns. The other side was an explosion of the text, to symbolize the insecurities.

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